The Nobel Prize ranks high among prestigious awards internationally. In its academic categories of Chemistry, Economics, Literature, Medicine/Physiology, and Physics, the Nobel Prize is arguably the highest honor any scholar can receive. It confers honor, advances research in the area, attracts research money, and raises the personal stock of the winner, thereby generating the “Matthew effect,” among many of its benefits. However, since the prize is given for significant contributions to humanity, it is not unreasonable to ask what its cumulative impact has been to-date. In that regard, there remains a gap in our understanding of this question, in large part because of the incompleteness of the data on the full value of the Nobel Prize.
This exercise seeks to fill in two cracks in the existing gap, and it does so in two related installments -Part 1 and -Part 2. -Part 1 - the current part - is a theory-less arithmetic exercise that calculates the full value of the Nobel Prize, including the values of the Nobel Prize medal and diploma. While it is a cheap
“data” mining “without theory,” it is not a useless activity. For example, the exercise finds that Alfred Nobel and his people have kept their promise, and backed it up with real money - big money. On a per capita basis and over its life-cycle todate, the Nobel Prize exceeds many countries’ educational budgets, even without considering its time value of money. Impressive!
However, with such an impressive record the Nobel Prize raises questions about what its cumulative effect is. Part 1 sketches some fundamental relationships between human technical capability (development), human capital, technological change, the Nobel Prize, and long-run economic performance. Part 2 attempts to formalize the sketches of Part 1, seeking to understand their deeper theoretical and empirical content as well as interconnectedness. Thus, although Part 1 is not a research project in the Scientific
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Method sense, the data, information, and insights it generates can be used to assess the implications of the Nobel Prize for human capital accumulation, technological change, and human development and economic performance. This is a letter of invitation to all interested parties to put this data to good use.
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